I was thinking yesterday, after I looked at pictures on the Internet of "story arcs", that the line going up and then down can kind of leave you with the impression that it's a "rise-and-fall" situation. Like - first things get good and then they go "downhill," as the expression goes.
But that isn't it.
It just means the character is in a different place from where he started, and the action has reached a conclusion.
A story arc is - something starts, the energy of the story intensifies (that's the line going up), and then after the peak action, or intensity, calm is restored. Or - peace is restored, or - a new situation for the protagonist(s) is reached.
As "Christa-phah" says in The Sopranos, "He starts here. He winds up there."
Now, a story arc can be a rise-and-fall situation. The ending can be negative instead of jubilant and positive, but that's not what the downward line on the story-arc graphs means.
Examples of story arcs:
"Behind The Music," a VH-1 show from the 1990s; and
videos on You Tube where they tell about businesses that had success and then failed.
Those are definitely "rise-and-fall" models.
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